Holiday!

My apologies for the lack of updates. We have been very busy getting ready for the holiday season, so the blog will be on hiatus till after Christmas.

We have been doing a lot of exciting things lately at Month Club Store:

• With Olive, Pickle, Pickled Veggie and Peanut Butter of the Month Club, we have improved our offering by allowing customers to choose between one or two different selections each month - can you imagine 24 different jars of pickles over twelve months?
• We have lined up quite a few new and exciting vendors for our clubs and are pleased to continue improving the quality of our selections.
• We hope to introduce a few new clubs in the coming weeks, but just don't have anything finalized just yet.

It has been an interesting year for us on costs. Many of our food vendors raised prices because their ingredients costs went up and shipping costs spiked due to increased fuel costs (its interesting that these seem to go up right away when the gas prices go up, but don't seem to come down very fast when gas prices go down).

In the face of this, we have been fortunate to hit some decent volume levels and be able to streamline many processes. So we have actually kept our costs level or in some cases, lowered our costs in the past year. And while we see some of competitors raising their prices, we have not raised any of our prices and in some cases, we have lowered our prices.

Oh - and an update on SoupsOnline.com: we are now offering over 400 different soup mixes. 400!!

So Merry Christmas everyone! Check back in 2009 for more reviews on our featured products!

Lasagna Chips

For our Snack of the Month Club, we typically feature what we are featuring from some of our snack clubs like potato chips, pretzels, chips & salsa, popcorn, nuts, etc. But every few months we find a snack that doesn't really fit in with any of our other categories. Lasagna Chips are one such item.

A mother nicknamed “Lainie” founded this company in 1988. She created Lasagna Chips out of a need for her son who was hyperactive (ADD) and sensitive to the preservatives, additives, artificial colors and flavors in snack foods available. “I found it necessary to create an all natural snack for him in my kitchen. Not only did he like it, so did all his friends as well! It was the biggest seller at the cake sales at school. Next, their parents were asking me to prepare a batch for their parties. Eventually, after many suggestions to open my own business, I did. And so “Lainie's Lasagna Chips” was born."

When her idea got so big that she couldn't keep up anymore, she inlisted the help of A&J Snacks - they were the original creator of the now famous New York Bagel Chips. Lasagna Chips are now available in four varieties: Sea Salt, Barbecue, Original Garlic & Oregano and my favorite, Tomato Basil.

Halladay's Harvest Barn

Halladays sits on a hill, in Vermont, overlooking the beautiful Connecticut River Valley. Open since 1895 on a terrace of beautiful Victorian homes, Halladays has evolved into a thriving specialty herb producer, greenhouse & gift shop.

Halladays Harvest Barn produces on site the famous line of Harvest Barn specialty foods. Products include unusual blends such as garlic chipolte, chardonnay and tomato basil herb mixes, no bake cheesecakes including tiramisu and key lime, and delicious infused garlic oils & vinegars.

In August we featured several of their items for our Dip/Cheeseball of the Month Club including their Double Chocolate Amaretto and Pineapple Chipotle Cheeseball mixes and their Italian Mushroom and Boursin Cheese Dip mixes.

In addition, we also added their entire line of soup mixes to Soups Online. Their soup mixes are wonderful and unique. Perfect for two, these soups mixes are reasonably priced at $3.99.

Spacey Tracy's Pickles

Spacey Tracy's products originated out of her kitchen a decade ago as gifts to her friends and local taverns. The word spread and the rest is history!

She got started with canned pickles, eventually adding pickled veggies, jellies and most recently, fried dill pickles.

Her product line has dominated the list of awards at the Rosendale International Pickle Festival the past few years with offerings such as her Garlicy Dill Pickles, Sweet & Spicy Sunshine Pickles and her Garlicy Dill Carrots. We recently featured the Garlicy Dills for our Pickle of the Month Club and the Garlicy Carrots for the Pickled Veggie of the Month Club.

If you would like to try her products, you can give her a call to place an order at 845-876-8083 or check out her website (note: at the time of this post, her site was 'under construction' and not taking orders). You can also get her pickles by joining the Pickle of the Month Club as we will be featuring them annually.

Wolfie's Nuts

As a young boy stomping around the old West End of Findlay, Ohio, William "Wolfie" Wolf was lucky enough to live near Mrs. "Maggie" Phillips' old white two-story house. Her first floor was a small store. It was a child's dream with its old creaky wooden floors, comic books, penny candy, and an aroma of fresh roasted nuts. For a returnable pop bottle he could get a small bag of those warm redskins or delicious cashews.

He eventually came to own the store and expand it into a thriving business all the while keeping a focus on the small batch, home-made quality that made Maggie's nuts so special.

But it was in 1996 that Wolfie along with brothers Don and Hillis Schieber began producing Fire Roasted Crunchy Nuts. Don and Hillis discovered this unique recipe/process in "Old Mexico", brought the recipe home, patented the process and then got together with Wolfies to exclusively produce these delicious nuts.

So what makes these Fire Roasted Crunchy Nuts so special? Always working in batches of no more than 25 pounds, they start by coating the nuts by hand with a mixture that, when roasted, adds the “crunchy” to the nuts. From there, they dry-roast them over an open flame (with no added oils!), then add one final coating … the secret recipe that will make your mouth sing!

These unique and delicious nuts are in our regular rotation with our Nut of the Month Club though we rotate year over year between cashews, almonds and several varieties of peanuts.

Laurie’s Kitchen

Speaking of soups.... one of our regular Soup of the Month Club featured companies is Laurie's Kitchen. Laurie's is part of Old World Spices based in Kansas City, Missouri.

Old World got it's start in 1988 when John Jungk founded Industrial Ingredients Supply. As the name implies, they provided bulk product for food manufacturers. Over time, they began to focus more and more on spices and seasonings and in 1996 changed the name to Old World Spices & Seasonings. It was in 1999 that they launched a line of branded gourmet mixes that was headed up by Jungk's eldest daughter Laurie Corbin.

Sadly, Laurie passed on unexpectedly at the age of 38 in 2001. To remember her, the family business set out to create a whole new line of gourmet mixes that were truly inspired by her home cooking. They named the line Laurie's Kitchen and it launched in 2006. They now offer a complete line of mixes for soup, dips, cheeseballs, desserts, vinaigrettes and sauces.

We have featured several of their products for our month clubs and now offer the full line of soup mixes at http://www.soupsonline.com/.

Soup's On!!!

Thank you loyal readers for your patience! There is a reason I've been slow to update the blog lately. Myself and our entire staff have been working feverishly over the past two months preparing an entirely new website dedicated to soups!

We've just launched http://www.soupsonline.com/. It is the largest collection of gourmet soup mixes that you can find anywhere (online or otherwise). For starts, we have over 200 soup mixes from over 30 vendors but we anticipate that growing to over 350 soup mixes from over 40 vendors by the Fall.

The product listings on the site are incredibly informative with great descriptions, complete ingredients lists, directions, alternate uses, nutrition facts and product reviews. Here is one of my favorite soups: Chicago French Bistro French Onion Soup.

It is also easy to shop with a very detailed categorization that allows you to search by type (chili mixes, broths, chowders, etc.), ingredients (asparagus, corn, mushroom, potato, etc.), ethnicity (Italian Soups, Southwestern Soups, Cajun Soups, etc.), season or dietary need. We even have sections for "just add water" soups, crock pot friendly soups and single serving soups.

I know, soup in the dead of summer? We launched at this time so we could get any bugs worked out and really tweak the site in time for the Fall.

Here is the best part - for the readers of my blog, you can get 10% off through the end of August by entering the coupon code "gfrblog" at checkout. There is also free shipping available on larger orders. So take a look and tell all your friends that "Soup's on!"

Forest Floor Foods

Some of the more unique companies we work with are in the categories of pickles, olive, pickled veggies and blody mary mixes. One company that we have worked with for several years that fits all of these categories is Forest Floor Foods.

Forest Floor Foods originated 30 years ago as a fresh mushroom farm in central Wisconsin. Their success at mushroom growing and a demand for a great tasting pickled mushroom led them directly to the establishment of “Forest Floor Foods” Pickled Products. They are so committed to pickled products that they have the domain name http://www.pickledveggies.com/.

We have featured their pickled mushrooms for our Pickled Veggie of the Month Club, their Bloody Mary Pickle Spears for our Pickle of the Month Club, their Garlic Stuffed Olives for our Olive of the Month Club and their Premium Bloody Mary Mix for our Bloody Mary of the Month Club.

The Boulder Hot Sauce Company

Harry Robertson set out in 1998 to create the best tasting hot sauces in the world. Certain only of his devotion to great food, he sat down with over 100 fresh ingredients, a bag of chips, and a large towel. He measured, chopped, roasted, cooked, tasted, and yes… sweated a lot. After months of ritualistic pain and pleasure and a soaking wet towel, Smokey Serrano and Harry’s Habanero were born.

Today, every bottle is made with this same small batch philosophy of slow roasting peppers over all natural charcoal, choosing only the freshest vegetables and hand crafting hot sauces with a marvelous balance between flavor and heat. And you can see the quality in the bottle with thick chuncks of ingredients. These sauces are two of our favorite hot sauces and an annual feature of our Hot Sauce of the Month Club.

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Take a look Harry's company website, the BoulderHot Sauce Company.

Mackays

The Scottish city of Dundee has a long association with marmalade. The oft-related story of how this came about begins sometime in the 1700s when a Spanish ship with a cargo of Seville oranges docked in Dundee harbour to shelter from storms. A grocer by the name of James Keiller bought a vast amount of the cargo at a knock-down price, but found it impossible to sell the bitter oranges to his customers. He passed the oranges on to his wife Janet who used them instead of the normal quinces to make a fruit preserve. The marmalade proved extremely popular and the Keiller family went in to business producing marmalade. However this is almost complete fiction. The truth is that in 1797, James Keiller, who was unmarried at the time, and his mother Janet opened a factory to produce "Dundee Marmalade", that is marmalade containing thick chunks of orange rind, this recipe (probably invented by his mother) being a new twist on the already well-known fruit preserve of orange marmalade.

Over the years, this variety of marmalade became quite popular in Scotland as well as other parts and many other producers emerged in the area to compete against the company that Keiller had grown. Eventually they all faded away - even the Keillers. But one still stands today and is the only remaining producer of Marmalade in the Dundee area.

Mackays was originally founded in 1938 by the Mackay brothers. They are one of the very few companies in the world today that still uses the traditional ‘open pan’ slow boiling method of jam making which gives their preserves and marmalades their distinct homemade taste and flavour.

The rolling boil method is regarded as the only effective way to produce a traditional preserve and this is done by using steam heated copper-bottomed open pans where the fruit and sugar is slowly boiled allowing the natural pectin and acids to be released before gradually setting. If you have ever tried in your own kitchen with a supply of chilled saucers, watching and testing for this magic moment, you will appreciate this skill involved in judging it precisely!

We feature Mackays for our Jelly of the Month Club. This past month, we featured their Three Fruit Marmalade, a delightful combination of Orange, Lemon and Grapefruit. In the past, we have also featured their Scottish Three Berry Preserves, Scottish Raspberry Preserves, Strawberry with Champagne Preserves and Vintage Dundee Orange Marmalade (rumored to be as close to the original 1797 recipe as possible).

Classy Delites

Classy Delites is a family based business based in Austin, Texas. All of their products combine quality ingredients to create unforgettable offerings.

We first met them at the San Francisco Fancy Foods Show several years back and were hooked by their unique and delicious offerings. Since then we have featured several of their items - mostly for our Chips and Salsa of the Month Club.

Their Aztec Salsa combines black beans with roasted corn to make one of our favorite bean based salsas. In fact, once opened, a jar usually has a 15-20 minute lifespan. Brandon in the warehouse loves this stuff so much that we have to hide it when it comes in so that we have enough for our customers.

Their Mango Salsa has loads of sunny mangos, zesty jalapenos, fresh garlic, sweet onions, and roma tomatoes highlighted with fresh ginger, fresh cilantro, and aged Balsamic vinegar – great with chips or as an accompaniment to grilled chicken.

Their Jamaican Salsa is the most unique of their salsas (and probably one of the more unique ones we have ever featured). It combines the spices of Jamaica with fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, onions, lots of carrots, fire roasted red chile peppers, fresh serranos, smoky chipotles, and roasted garlic.

They also have a Tortilla Chip that is as exceptional as it is unique. They call them Tweeds and they are made out of corn, flax seed and sesame seed. They also make an even more unique version with coconut.

Potato Chips from Europe!

We first ran into LantChips at the Winter Fancy Foods Show in San Francisco several years ago. The folks in the booth had literally just flown in from Sweden just to do the show. Due to a shipping issue, their booth was make shift and they only had their Original and Sour Cream and Onion to sample. But that was all we needed to be interested in this chip.

So we decided we wanted to feature this chip. The only problem was that it wasn't available in the US yet. In fact quite a few international vendors attend these food shows to identify distributors and/or producers and this was the case with them. We kept in touch and they eventually set up a production and distribution arrangement with Utah Chips and we were able to feature them. The only places we have seen these pop up in the US since are online at Amazon or at Ikea stores.

They also own US distribution rights to another unique chip maker based in England called Jonathan Crisps. In the US, however, they are marketed as Imperial Crisps. They even sent us a sample of these from Sweden before they were even being produced for the US. The flavors are truly unique: Black Pepper & Ginger, Black Olive & Garlic, Mature Cheddar & Red Onion, Sundried Tomato & Basil, Horseradish & Sour Cream, Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar, Parsnip Crisps and Parsnip, Beetroot & Sweet Potato. You can also find some of these varieties online at Amazon.

Also from the UK, we just recently featured Tyrrells chips. These chips were all the rage at last Summer's New York Fancy Foods Show. We saw these at several distributors over the span of several days. And if you think the Jonathan Crisps flavors were unique, check these out: Worcester Sauce with Sun Dried Tomatoes, Spicy Jalapeno Chile & Lemon, Mature Cheddar & Chives, Thai Curry & Coriander, Cider Vinegar & Sea Salt and Ludlow Sausage with Wholegrain Mustard (pictured). The only place that I have seen these available online in the US is at Chelsea Market Baskets.

For our Potato Chip of the Month Club recently, we shipped an assortment with nine different varieties from these three companies.

Tony Packo’s

The son of Hungarian immigrants, Tony Packo was a native East Toledoan. Tony was born in 1908, just a stone's throw from Consaul and Genesee streets. Tony Packo started out as a factory worker. That all changed when, in 1932, he and his wife got a $100 loan from relatives. No small feat, mind you, for this was during the hardest of hard times, the first years of the Great Depression. That same year he opened a sandwich and ice cream shop just around the corner from the place he was born. Tony had learned the restaurant business working for his older brother John, who owned a place across Consaul Street in what is now Tony Packo's parking lot. There was no beer at Packo's that first year. Prohibition would not be lifted until 1933.

Because Tony was Hungarian-American and lived in a Hungarian neighborhood, Tony’s creation was called the Hungarian hot dog. Until Toledo-born Tony invented it, there was no such thing as a Hungarian hot dog, say those who know the Old Country's food.Packo's food was an instant hit in the neighborhood. Within months of opening, Tony and Rose knocked out a wall and expanded their first shop, in what is now called the Consaul Tavern. By 1935, success had taken them to the point where they could buy a building of their own. They purchased the wedge-shaped establishment at Front and Consaul. The building houses part of today's Tony Packo's, but with a few more additions. The restaurant is still run by the Packo family…Tony and Rose's children; Tony Jr. and Nancy, and Nancy's son, Robin.

Their biggest leap in fame came on Feb. 24, 1976 when Jamie Farr read the lines "If you're ever in Toledo, Ohio, on the Hungarian side of town, Tony Packo's got the greatest Hungarian hot dogs. Thirty-five cents..." on the television show M*A*S*H. The name appealed to the scriptwriters, who wrote Packo's into five subsequent episodes. In one show, the mobile hospital unit asked Packo's to send sausage casings to be used in a blood-filtering machine. Packo's was also mentioned in the two-and-a-half-hour final episode in 1983.

Of course the most important part of Packo's is the food! We have tried many of their retail offerings and they are all very good. But our hands down favorite is their Original Pickles & Peppers. They combine a very nice mix of sweet and spice to create a pickle that is out of this world. In fact, this pickle is so good that one of our friends who hates pickles actually asked us to get him a few jars (we almost had to force him to try one). You can get these delicious pickle regionally in some grocery stores, online at http://www.tonypackos.com/ or if you are a member of the Pickle of the Month Club (these are usually featured every year in the January-March time frame).

CHeRiTH VaLLeY

CHeRiTH VaLLeY gardens is a family owned and operated business located in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1986, Alan Werner was a principal in an independent oil company, which funded, drilled and operated gas and oil wells in West Texas . The stock market plunge of October 1987 precipitated the eventual collapse of the company. At that time Alan and his family began gardening in order to produce vegetables to feed the family. They prepared the soil, planted, watered, weeded, harvested and canned a garden's bounty for the year's consumption. After using their canned items as gifts, they were strongly encouraged to market their specialty products. All of the recipes for their product line have been developed from old as well as new family recipes. On May 8, 1993 , they officially produced the first CHeRiTH VaLLeY gardens product.

Their product line is varied and we have had the good fortune of sampling many of their offerings. Ultimately, we have featured a number of their products in several of our clubs. Here are a just a few of the stand outs:

• Mustard of the Month Club: if I had to estimate, we have featured over 50 different mustards from over thirty different companies. Of all of these, one has gotten the most favorable response from our customers. It is their Raspberry Wasabi Mustard. This is one you will always find in our refrigerator - I use it on everything, sandwiches, burgers, brats, as a pretzel dip - can't say enough about this mustard! (Note: you won't find this mustard on their website at this time, but you can order it from them via phone.)
• Pickle of the Month Club: they offer a nice variety of pickled veggies and we really enjoyed their pint size pickles that are made from their Grandmother's recipe. They have three sizes: pint, quart and half gallon. The two larger sizes are whole dills while the smaller pint size is sliced. This is the only size we have tried and they were gone in one sitting - slightly spicy, they are totally addictive!
• Salsa of the Month Club: they offer ten different salsas and we have sampled them all though we have not featured them yet. Why? Partly scheduling, but mostly because several of these salsas are just too unique for our customer base (we look for unique, but not so unique that some customers may be turned off). For instance - I love green olives whole, but not in my salsas. They have a Green Olive Salsa that I tried, but that was it - no way - not for me! We sampled their salsas at a group gathering several weeks ago. Top three: Mango Habanero, Raspberry Cilantro and Black Bean. Most unique: Green Olive, Roasted Pepper, Garlic, Mango Lime.
• Jelly of the Month Club: Last month we featured two of their jellies: their Mimosa Jelly is made with orange juice, oranges and champagne and their Margarita Jelly is made with fresh limes, tequila and all!
• We have also featured their products for our Olive of the Month Club and our BBQ Sauce of the Month Club.

Big John's Beef Jerky

Based in York, PA, Big John's Beef Jerky has been a regular on the Beef Jerky of the Month Club rotation for many years and is a personal favorite of mine. Big John is just a guy who knows how to make great tasting jerky. It was his daughter Renee and her husband Bill Lenzer that made it a business in the summer of 2000. Big John's job is product development and (of course) quality control while Renee and Bill run the business end of things.

All of their Beef Jerky is made in small batches by hand using Big John’s time-tested method -- without the use of big processing machines. They use only lean, top round beef that is hand sliced and marinated all day in a secret blend of spices. After making sure every piece is seasoned just right, they slow smoke it with real Hickory -- not liquid smoke or artificial flavors. It is then cut into easy to eat strips - something that makes them different from other jerkys we have tried - most make the cuts before they smoke rather then after - this seems to preserve the true meat/smoke flavor that tends to get covered up by the marinade or glaze in other jerkys.

They have four varieties: Original, Teriyaki, BBQ and Fiery Hot. I have tried them all and think they are all great - I like the spicy because it is a really nice heat - not too hot like some others on the market that drown the meat in spice so much that you can't even appreciate the meat.

Nutty's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter!

A recent selection for the Peanut Butter of the Month Club, Nutty's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter started years ago in the mind of a little girl who always wanted to open her own peanut butter and jelly shop. As an adult, Carrie’s kitchen became her lab, where crazy concoctions emerged. In 2002 with the help of her husband Keith they opened The Original Peanut Butter Emporium in Overton, Texas. Carrie and Keith have combined their love of history and nostalgia with their love of peanut butter to create a unique peanut butter experience.

The Peanut Butter Emporium is nestled in the piney woods of East Texas, in historic downtown Overton. Not only do they serve up delicious, fresh milled flavored peanut butters there, they also offer a full menu including unique peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter pie, fudge, ice cream, etc. While you are there, you can learn all about the history of peanut butter by walking through their History of Peanut Butter Exhibit.

Their peanut butter selections are wonderful and range from Original Honey Roasted to Sweet Cinnamon Cherry to Peanut Butter Brickle. We recently featured their Honey Roasted Crunch, a great tasting, all natural peanut butter that is made with a perfect combination of honey, sugar and salt, giving it the perfect flavor of salty and sweet with an added "crunch".

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Gourmet Food Review!

My name is Todd and I am the lead buyer for Month Club Store. Month Club Store offers the largest selection of gourmet food monthly clubs available on the internet and I have the good fortune of sampling and comparing literally thousands of unique specialty gourmet food items over the course of a year.

The purpose of this blog is to share with readers my review of various items that I encounter in the course of my life in food. The items may be new on the market or gems that I have been buying for years. They may be from well established specialty food producers that offer 100's of items or from small batch mom and pops that rent a kitchen once a month to produce their wares.

So enjoy... and be sure to leave related comments on my posts. If the topic is mustard and you know of a truly amazing mustard, leave a comment and let everyone know about it!